Safety tests for child bike tows

Lucy Carroll and Goya Dmytryshchak

Parents who tow their children on the back of their bicycles are often using carriers that have not been tested to any official safety standards.

Many of the carriers available, which include wheeled trainers, wheelbarrow-style cargo boxes, front-mounted baby seats and bucket bikes, are not tested the same way as car seats or other child carriers are.

Their popularity has prompted an independent review of their safety, which is expected to be open for public comment by the end of the year.

The current Standards Australia guidelines - which only covers baby seats behind the rider - require carriers to have five harness points, strapped foot rests and that the child weigh less than 22 kilograms.

''The last review done was in 1995 and most of these products weren't available when,'' says Peter Bourke, general manager of Bicycle Industries Australia.

''But most of the trailers are made overseas and are designed to meet European standards. The vast majority are extremely safe.''

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Bicycle Network Victoria spokesman Garry Brennan said the bike industry itself had ''a good idea of what the best options are … and I don't know that they would be retailing anything that's not up to scratch''.

''It's not as if we are talking about a small little tiny sector of activity,'' he said. ''In the sector, it's very common indeed for people to carry their kids on bikes, so there are many many carriage devices of various kinds that are used around the world.''

Monash University's Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit collects data on child cycling injuries, but this is not broken down in to injuries from child carriers on bicycles.

Senior lecturer at Deakin University's School of Health and Social Development, Jan Garrard, said that the most recent data, from 2003-2005, indicated that from an annual average of 753 hospital admissions for cycling injuries among children aged 0-14 years, about 10 were for bicycle passengers, including children in child bike seats, trailers and possibly dinking.